Monday, April 2, 2012

Coffee Dress

I was going to go with a Halloween print, but ended up picking a coffee print instead. Think it'll look perky? Ha ha ha! Ha! Anyway, I found out after the fact that this is actually an I Love Lucy print. That doesn't really matter, but I thought I'd mention it.

Most of the construction of this dress is pretty straightforward, except the sleeves. There's some gathering in the bust, but that's nothing too big. Here's the bodice:

Rather than go over every little detail of the sewing and then showing the final product, I'm going to show the final product and then go back to the details. This was another dress where it needs to hang (overnight, not 24 hours!) to stretch before it's hemmed. I was impatient, so I went ahead and took pictures of the unhemmed dress.

Here's a close up of the gathering:

NB: those sleeves don't really look anything like the pattern envelope. I could tell as I was sewing them that they weren't going to work; the elastic was just too long and inserted in a stupid way. They're supposed to hang off the sides, but the only way the dress will stay up is if I pull them all the way up like I've done here. I'm not sure if I'm going to keep it that way or try to fix it yet, but I was pretty disappointed by how this turned out.

I will probably go back and make the bolero featured in this pattern at some later date. If I do anything to the sleeves, I will do a post on that also.

Other than the sleeves, this is a pretty easy pattern. The gathering aside (which isn't even in all the views), the only other challenges would be inserting the zipper and the understitching. While I haven't tried the other views, I would say going with either the straps or the sleeves of view C would be the way to go here. A beginner could probably handle this pattern.

Oooh, I hadn't thought of accessorizing in red. I do have some awesome red tights and fishnets from We Love Colors that I don't wear nearly often enough, and a pair of sparkly red heels (though I think that might be a one or the other thing). I think the fishnets might work better here since the style is a little bit vintage.

Thanks for the idea - I'll try to get my hubby to do a photo shoot soon!

Thank you kindly. Just remember to adjust the elastic if you make it in view A (I think you can probably chop off at least an inch from what they recommend). And the fabric is still available from a few places, like here: http://www.4my3boyz.com/c=le3Ih29KCH2t50DNbCBVuUm3U/product/CHARILOVELUCYCUPS/I-Love-Lucy-Fabric---Fat-Quarter-Fabric---Quilt-Fabric.html